Tuesday 12 August 2008

Nearing the end!

It's been a long holiday and I've loved it!

I only have 3 more days here - I leave at midnight on the Friday 15th - which means I have to be ready at the airport at about 9pm on Thursday 14th. So it seems, Wednesday 13th is my last real day here.

Tomorrow I'm going out for dinner with Fran and Jack as a leaving dinner, and on Wednesday I'm spending the day out with Claire, a friend I made over here (the one I went canoeing with, there's a picture of her somewhere down there). We're going to see Batman and then hang out for the rest of the day, which will be nice, and it will take my mind off of the HUGELY IMMENSE AND EPIC event happening that evening: RESULTS!

Anyway, it's 3am here. Better sleep.

Sunday 10 August 2008

My last couple of excursions...

It's my last week here, and in the past few days my aunt has still been cramming in plenty of things to do! The day after my day at the dog kennels, we took a train and boat tour. Firstly, we took a train, leaving Anchorage at 7am, to Seward - a coastal town which almost reminded me of home. The train trip itself was 4 hours long and not your average boring train journey - it was more of a touristic trip; it was a pretty luxurious train, with a snack bar and a dining car serving posh food, and on the trip there was a kind of commentary on the scenery. And the scenery included glaciers, gorges, rivers...

As well as moose!


When we got to Seward, we went straight to the docks where we boarded the boat for a trip out to Fox Island, a small island nearby, where we ate lunch (Alaskan salmon, yum), and then came back with a tour of the bay. Here's a photo of me and the boat out at Fox Island:

The whole thing was about 6 hours long, and I must admit I did start feeling a little bit seasick near the end - the boat was reeeeally rocky. I did see puffins, sea otters, sea lions, and... a humpback whale, which is a rare sight so I was pretty lucky!



The train journey was pretty much the same on the way back, but with some spectacular sunsets as it approached midnight:

The next day, we got up bright and early (again...) to leave for another camping trip! This time it was just Fran and I, and we were driving up to Denali National Park, which was only a 5 hour drive - a short drive compared to what I've been getting used to out here! We camped there the night, this was our little camp:

And the next day we took another touristy trip, this time an 8 hour bus tour of the park on this cuuuute bus:


The roads were those narrow ones that twist around the mountain, when you look out the window you’re so close to the edge you cant see the road, just the drop. It didn’t help my nerves when people kept seeing moose or bears in the gorge down below, and every single person on the bus ran to the side nearest the edge… It was difficult to get the right angle but you can kind of get the idea from this photograph:


And this picture pretty much summarises the quality of the road:


The weather was pretty crappy so we didn't see much wildlife, apart from an awesome grizzly bear and a few herds of caribou, but they were too far away to photograph - probably a good thing with the grizzly though. But the scenery was still amazing, and just to prove it IS cold here even though it's supposedly summer:


So don't listen to the online weather reports which somehow suggest its not that much cooler than England. It's not! Summer is already over, its already autumn here, and the first snowstorms should be expected in a month.

Fortunately, I'm coming home before then - I'll be arriving back in England on Saturday morning! Yay! I'm getting pretty homesick! And I reeeeeeally miss my doggies!

(Although it will be weird when I come home and all the shops, lodges, hotels and bars don't have antlers all over them for decoration. This is a typical one, it's a cafe/gift shop but they all have them - this one has 8.)



Not long now and I'll be back ...as Annie Lennox said: it's alright, baby's coming back! :-D

Wednesday 6 August 2008

2 weeks, 2000 miles: continued (mainly in pictures)

I am tired - I've had no breaks from action-packed activities and sightseeing this week, I got up at 4am today and I got home at midnight - and tomorrow I'm heading out again for 2 more days of camping. I better show you last week though or I’ll never catch up! So this is mainly going to be pictures.
Okay, so when my aunt and uncle picked me up from camp, we drove about 6 or 7 hours up to Dawson City (in Canada). This is Dawson City as you approach it from the mountains:

When you arrive at the city there is no way of driving in. You have to drive onto a ferry which takes you across the river to the city. This is the only way of reaching it. It's a small town (in England terms) of about 2,000 population. But that's pretty huge in Canada terms, it's even more deserted than Alaska! And once, it really was a "city" - it was a huge gold rush town and all the buildings look exactly like they were built in the 1800's (some of them were), and it genuinely feels as though you've gone back in time.


There are a lot of interesting buildings, from "Diamond Tooth Gertie's" gambling hall/bar, to the grocery stores and gift shops, which all fit in with the gold rush era theme. I took pictures of a lot of them, including this one which has a verse by Robert Service (a famous local poet who wrote about life in the gold rush) painted on it. This picture is pretty self explanatory, someone else stole the show from Robert Service's poetry at least:

We went to see a show at the theatre, it was a typical Dawson City show with fiddling and dancing. Actually, pretty much everything was "typical" in Dawson City, everything fit in, even the people.

So we stayed at Dawson City for 2 nights before heading back out on the Demptser highway to the Arctic Circle. I say "highway"... in actual fact the road looked like this the whole way up:

As you can see the road isn't paved. In fact, you can't see the potholes but they're everywhere, and the road was slippery too. It was totally bumpy all the way up and most people lose a tyre or two. We drove slowly so we were okay, but let me tell you, it's a pain in the ass driving for hours: 400 miles up a bumpy highway at only 30 miles an hour. I was already feeling sick at this point. We actually reached the Arctic Circle but missed the sign so I don't have a photo of me with the Arctic Circle sign :-( But we went far beyond it anyway, even into the Northwest Territories (and very few people get to go that far north!). So I do have a photo of me there:
And you can see that it's in the Arctic Circle because there are no trees in the background of that photo - it's tundra. Just to prove how horrible and dirty that highway was, here's the back of the car after driving it:
The car is actually supposed to be bright blue. And that isn't just dust either, it wont even come off with a scraper. It had to be washed twice afterwards.
So, on the way back (and I'm rushing through this and skipping bits - we actually camped for a night in the Arctic Circle - brr!) I was feeling extremely sick. It wasn't carsickness because it started before I got in the car. My head was throbbing, my stomach ached, my throat was sore and I couldn't swallow anything, and I had a fever. I looked at my tonsils in the mirror and it turns out I had tonsilitis... ALL the way home. I tried to sleep most of the way (and it's hours and hours on end of driving, like driving to Scotland and back - twice!). But I did catch some scenery. Here is me trying not to look sick, in front of a glacier:
I put some blusher on before the photo in an attempt to look less like a corpse. I certainly felt like one... But when I got home I took a course of antibiotics so I'm recovering now!
Yesterday we went to a working sled dog kennels! It was amazing! They are cute, friendly, dumb, yet talented dogs.

They all love people. They were all running round and round on their chains and barking, trying to get your attention, and this is what happens when you give it to them:

So, here's the team geared up and ready to go. This was actually the guy's "A-Team" as he called it - his 12 best dogs. These guys will actually be running the great Iditarod race next year so they really are the best of the best:

Here's me about to set of on a ride! Obviously there is no snow in the summer so they can't pull a sled. So to practice they pull this buggy. They are so strong the guy in charge made me keep my foot on the brake while he was harnessing them up, in case they pulled off too soon. Some people have said that "making" the dogs run those long distances in the race is cruel. Well, after visiting a place like this, I can tell you that those people are ridiculous. They don't make the dogs run, they let the dogs run! All they want to do is run! There must have been at least 50 dogs there and when they got the harnesses out, they were all running around in circles, howling and barking and wagging their tails, trying to get picked for the team. And as soon as they're in the harnesses, they are trying to go, go go! They are mental.
They also had puppies, and after the ride we went on a nature trail walk with about 10 of them, as they can't pull a sled unti they're about 7 months old. This one was my favourite:

And with that cute little face, I bid you farewell for tonight. Today I went on a boat trip but I won't blog that, I don't have time. But I can tell you that I did see a humpback whale, sea lions, sea otters, eagles and puffins! Anyway, I'm leaving to go camping for 2 nights tomorrow, and I'll be back on the 8th. So I'll have to update you then!
Goodnight!

Monday 4 August 2008

2 weeks, 2000 miles (to be continued)

Well... It's been a long 2 weeks and I should probably start from the beginning if I want to keep this blog post shorter than a novel! It'll be in two parts at least, anyway, I'm not staying up all night writing!

So I'll start with my first week, when I departed from my aunt and uncle in Alaska and headed East to the Yukon, Canada, to participate in an archaeology field school right on the US/Canadian border. Lorraine, a friend of my aunt, drove me there - I'd never met her before but she was lovely, and although it was over 8 hours drive, it wasn't so bad because when I wasn't sleeping, this was the kind of view we had:

When I got there it was pretty late and they'd already had dinner, so I didn't get the chance to get to know any of the other students at camp that evening, I was tired from the drive and we had to be at breakfast by 7.30am the next day. So I retired to my tent (after putting it up, that is) and set my alarm for 7. It was freezing when I woke up in the morning, and my clothes were too, and I'm no morning person... So I snuggled down into my sleeping bag for another 10 minutes. I ended up leaving my tent and getting to breakfast at 7.40, just 10 minutes late, and everyone had told me that camp hadn't been running on schedule anyway, so I wasn't worried. But when I got to the "mess tent" (the food tent), there were only a couple of people left washing the dishes! It turns out I was not ten minutes late but an hour and ten minutes late. No-one had told me about the time zone change from crossing the Canadian border.

So the day was off to a bad start already, I guess. I chomped down a bowl of coco pops and headed for work in the pits, armed with my trowel and the rest of my digging kit - a complete amateur at archaeology but willing to learn, and Lorraine had promised to teach me... And damn, she worked me hard, considering it was an 8 o'clock start in the cold and all... At lunch I was ready for a break - I was not used to early starts and outdoor work. So I headed for my tent to pick something up, and when I opened it, I was horrified. The mosquitoes and flies were not inside my actual tent, fair enough. But they were buzzing all around in between the net and the outer cover, and in the tent I could see and hear them swarming around above me.

So I was half way through my first day, and I was thinking to myself "It's cold. I'm being massacred by bugs, I'm tired, and now I have to sleep underneath a swarm of them tonight. I've been digging around in the cold dirt since 8am and finding very little, I feel totally inadequate because I know less about what I'm doing than anyone else on camp, and I don't have anyone to talk to! I have to carry on working until 6pm and I have a whole week of this to endure! Damn!"

Fortunately, that night we all drove to the nearest town (and when I say nearest town, I mean Beaver Creek: a shop, a lodge and a bar, population 100). And we went to the bar. And I got drunk. That was when I started to enjoy myself. It was a challenge on my lying skills because you have to be 19 to drink in Canada (still an improvement on 21 in Alaska), but I actually made friends with everyone. I made everyone laugh, and I made everyone marvel at my strange choice of drink - apparently they don't drink vodka with coke in the USA. 4 vodka & cokes, 4 shots of vodka and a tequila later, we were all friends, and the bugs did not bother me that night.

I am pleased to announce that I have improved in the waking-up-on-time-the-next-day department. Collapsed into bed intoxicated at 2am, up at 7am bright and cheerful without even feeling groggy! And I must say that the next day, things improved and even the digging started to be fun because I started to get to know what I was doing. I was learning the difference between a sharp rock that’s broken in half and a rock that’s actually been used a stone tool. And those tools were about 14,000 years old. You can see a few of the little things from this picture of one of the other students showing some visitors the artifacts:




So this is me working on site (don’t laugh if I look fat or stupid, camp was no fashion show and it was cold, so I’m padded out with several layers!)

Screening dirt for artifacts:


Putting up a tarp to stop the pits filling with rainwater:



Anyway, I found out that Lorraine had roped me into cooking with her the next day. On camp everyone takes turns – in pairs – to cook for the whole camp, and clean up after each meal too. Being on cooking duty means waking up at 6am so breakfast is ready for everyone else (about 12 people) at 7am. Fun… But at least now I know that if I can cook for 12, I can definitely cook for myself at uni. This is the mess tent we ate in every meal:



Note the peanut butter and jelly sandwich in progress on the left: you can tell the other students were all American… In fact, they forced me to try one. It wasn’t so bad after all, but I still prefer peanut butter without jam. Although we ate meals often comprising of leftovers from other days, we worked so hard with short breaks, so meal time was really looked forward too, and everything tastes good when you’re cold and tired.


We did fun things in the evenings. One night they went to play baseball at a field in Beaver Creek, and I went to watch. Watch… Ha. They forced me to play, and I’ve never played baseball or even seen it being played. They let me practice catching the ball in the glove a few times but that was it – I was lucky that the rules are similar to rounders, but its not like I was ever good at that at school either, or any sport for that matter. But I was pretty good at baseball if I may say so myself ^_^ Well, good considering it was my first time. I didn’t get a home run, but only one person did, and I did hit the ball first time and got round the bases without getting out! Yay.

Another thing we did was to go to a potlatch. A potlatch is like a big Native American kind of party. Well, I say party, it’s for when someone has died, but its not a funeral, its more of a celebration. In their culture, when someone dies, another clan steps in and helps with all the funeral arrangements. Then, at the potlatch there is dancing and eating and singing and they celebrate the person who has died. At the end they give out gifts, but not to the family of the person who has died. Actually what happens is that the family of the deceased one gives gifts to other people in the community, those who are not from the same family or clan. I think it was originally a way of redistributing wealth but now it is just to show how much they cared about the person who passed away. They usually give out blankets, and they had a huge pile of hundreds of blankets. They even gave me a big pile of gifts! They gave me two blankets and four towels.

I didn’t get many pictures at the potlatch – it was hard to tell when it was appropriate to - but here are a couple:


Giving out blankets and gifts:



Anyway, here’s another couple of pictures from camp:

This is the campfire we all sat around during our breaks and in the evenings to keep warm.

And this is how foggy and cold it was one morning in camp:














I’ll leave you with this, a list of things I read from the back of one of the senior archaeologist’s t-shirts:

10 Signs You’ve Been in the Field Too Long

1. You smell better with bug spray than without
2. Clean means bathing in the gravel ponds
3. You smell smoke from a forest fire and think it’s just your clothes
4. You are baffled and astounded by flushing toilets
5. You forget how to write your name but have no problems with words such as “paleosol” and “loess”
6. You have no qualms about eating the pretzel you saw on the ground by the dog’s foot
7. Your tan has an annoying tendency to come off with soap and water
8. You can’t tie your shoe due to “trowel hand”
9. When you hear the word “dating”, you assume that it means carbon
10. You are willing to fish a good marshmallow stick out of the fire with your bare hands

I can honestly say that pretty much every single one of those things applied to me by the end of the week. I even know what “paleosol” is (I dug four feet down to get to it with nothing but a trowel, so I also know what “trowel hand”). I definitely know about the dirt… On my first day my orange hoodie got so dirty and muddy I put it in my laundry bag to take home at the end of the week. Three days later, I got it out again because it was the cleanest thing I had left to wear!
In fact: to sum that all up, here’s me wearing that orange hoodie, sitting in the upper paleosol of my pit, dug by hand with a 5 and half inch trowel, and my first find – a bison bone (a very, very old bison! We later found the skull and a load of teeth too!)

Oh, and one more, of me standing in my pit proudly presenting my first profile (mapping of the soil layers ^_^)

Well, that’s all about my first week in Canada – working at camp. I have many more pictures too. And I’m sorry if I’ve bored you, but frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn, because I’m not keeping a diary and even if this blog becomes uninteresting to everyone else, at least I’ll remember my holiday forever.

But if you are interested, watch out for my next update :-D There was too much to write about my first week at camp so the rest – my road trip through the Yukon with my aunt and uncle – will follow another day.

I MISS YOU ALL - and I can't wait to come home! And my exam results too!

x